Conventional systems and methods exist that permit a multimedia presentation to be displayed over a computer network, such as the World Wide Web, to a plurality of audience members. The presentations presented to the audience members may be either a live presentation and/or an on-demand presentation. The presentations may include both web-casting and web-conferencing. Web-casting is an online presentation that includes an audio or video component that is delivered over the internet. Web-conferencing is an online presentation that may include a telephone based audio/video component, but does not include a standard internet based audio or video stream such as delivered by Quicktime®, Real®, or Windows Media Servers®.
One of the primary problems associated with Live (and often also On-demand) presentations on the Internet is the requirement for a download and install process for software that coordinates the various elements of the presentation. Whether it is the more ubiquitous Flash software, or a piece of proprietary software from a vendor like WebEx, installing software on an audience member's computer creates several challenges. First, there is no way to determine with certainty how the downloaded software will behave given the unique hardware, software, and data configuration of any particular audience member computer. This uncertainty makes troubleshooting, maintenance, and upgrades of the software difficult for system administrators. Second, security concerns often accompany the installation of new software, making it difficult to enforce a systematic security policy if a presentation requires a local installation in order for an audience member to view a presentation.
A second problem faced by almost all applications that are to be downloaded onto the audience member's computer is that they cannot be embedded without a clients' web site due to their complex functionality and the limitations imposed by online browsers' security models. In particular, a typical browser will not typically permit a web page served from one domain to read cookies written by a web page from another domain.
The current products that provide live presentations over the Internet including products offered by Macromedia, Webex, Placeware, Accordent and Communicast. However, all of these prior solutions have not so far addressed the need for a rich media viewer that incorporates the rich functionality described previously with a browser-based, no-download application. All of these conventional solutions have so far addressed markets where the end-users are willing to go to the trouble of installing and maintaining the vendor software on the local machines. Thus, none of the existing solutions provide a fully embedded, fully web-based, no-download solution to live online web conferences, webcasts, and presentations in general. Thus, it is desirable to provide a system and method that overcomes these limitations of the existing solutions and it is to this end that the present invention is directed.